The saddest are these:
by Kate Christie
Summary: What might have been between "Knockout" and "Rise." First place entry for the Castle Hiatus Writing Contest 2015. Thanks to Caffinate-Me and Airbefore - we do this better together. Twitter: Kate Christie Tumblr: KathrynChristie dot tumblr dot com.


Light echoes red off the rippling crown-glass panes, reflecting the clock's digits back in unsteady halos. Kate's focus falls on the play of color between the lead seams. 1846 - the year those windows first lit the two-story frame house, closer to Canada than to Manhattan. Her ghost sits just outside them, watching her, wondering, as Kate does, why she had not joined Roy that morning.

Dead.

Shot through the chest in 1846, Kate Beckett would have been dead.

The thought circles. Not for the first time, it lands in her conscious mind, interrupts the cycle of self-loathing and loneliness long enough for her eyes to dry. The year this house was built, she would have been gone, a stain on that bright green carpet. No CPR, no Josh, no blood transfusion. Castle's three words - heard or not by her unresurrected ears - would echo only in _his_ memory.

A hiccough knifes through her - a gift from her medication - making her chest cave in, a vain instinct to protect her injuries. For most of her life, regulating her breath has been second nature. Running, shooting, holding a pose - all of them hinge on that control. Now, breathing is the most impossible thing. Just ahead of lying still, moving, and tying shoes.

The memory of her ribs spreading, her lungs greedy, her whole body tingling with the flow of oxygen through her veins, hovers in the rafters, just out of reach. It's not even all her blood anymore. Kate had asked for the name of that donor. Anonymous. Failure lingers like the drugs, bitter on her tongue.

Castle...

Her fingers trace the skin peeking over the pilling edge of her cotton pajamas, the mottled green whorls that refuse to fade. With Josh, at least, she had succeeded. The day she did not die, his fingers had stitched the holes. When the last tube came out, she had set him free.

Parts. She owes her existence to their sum. Her body, sewn and painted and refilled, is a foreign land. Miraculous. Not even this place, this room, this bed nested with pillows her mother pieced and stuffed, can make her fit into the new confines of herself.

Nothing feels like home.

A slow blink almost turns to sleep. In the thickness of summer dark, time must work - as she does - to move forward. But her lashes part again, this time to find gray warring at the windowpanes. The sun might win again.

Her fingers close around glass and metal, cold against her skin. Ritual takes over; a slide, four digits, a tap, and the image of four faces, all caught halfway through a story, bathes her eyes in blue. Brian sent it last spring, a shot taken from behind the bar. Ryan and Esposito play off each other, and she eggs them on. But Castle's face pulls her focus now, his eyes filled only with her.

Thumb swiping at the image, she shuts her eyes only to find that same startling blue just inches away, his face rimmed in yellow-white and iridescent green.

 _"Kate. Stay with me."_

But she could not then, cannot now. Staying in that memory fails them both.

Counting off digits, she inhales just past the point of pain, opens her eyes and taps "call."

# * # * # * #

A breeze glides through the open window, ruffling the hair at the nape of her neck. Kate surfaces from sleep in a pool of softness, pillowcase cool beneath her cheek. Her chest rises, stuttering to a stop when her body reminds her what her brain has forgotten. She pushes up on one elbow, tries again.

"Kate?" Castle's voice husks low in her ear. "You okay?"

Half a halting breath leaves her first, answering with the truth before her lips and tongue can form the lie.

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

For three weeks Kate has been sure of only one thing. She stops lying.

"No."

"What can I do?"

Warmth carries his words to her ear, and something eases in the knotted fibers of muscle between her ribs. Her breath takes its time in coming, but when it does, it carries sun-warmed juniper and moss to her nose.

"Nothing. Just… be here."

"I can do that."

Believing him, she inhales again. His palm splays across her ribs, warm and unafraid. Nodding, she sinks back into his chest, stiffening when his arm winds around her, bracing to hurt. But no pain comes. Of course he would find a painless path.

"Did you sleep?"

Her thoughts have begun to loosen, ribbons of regret and fear coming untied after just one day of this. Of him. Her nod bumps the jut of his collarbone.

"It's still early. Close your eyes."

Her nose finds the cut of his jaw and skims the stubble, settles into a hollow, sharp with his scent. One by one, the fisted bands of muscle holding her up, protecting her wounded heart, unclench. Castle has seen her scars, his fingers have memorized the bruises. Called them victories. She drifts, boneless, trusting.

"I'm not going anywhere." The steady thud of his heartbeat draws her attention off the fits and starts of her own. She could rest in this spot, live right here where no one and nothing can find her. Except him. He will always find her, if she will let him.

"Glad you came."

"Always." The word resonates through knitting bone and sinew, settles around the tired muscle beating through it all.

Alive.

In 2011, Kate Beckett is alive.

One last look out the window, and all she sees is sky.


End file.
